Friday, January 21, 2011

CNBC went "balls to the walls" with a commercial free 40 minute interview with Mr. David Tepper. Actually there was a lot more talk about general broad economic themes, and less about the stock market, but big picture he is still quite bullish based on earnings expectations for 2012 along with some modest P/E multiple expansion. He believes with a 4% (max) rate on the 10 year bond, multiples should be closer to the 14-15 range and you can cross reference that to expected S&P 500 earnings at year end 2012 of somewhere over $100. With analysts believing $95ish for 2011, if we put 10% growth on that you are close to $105 for end of year 2012.

$105 x 14.5 PE multiple = S&P 1522 in about 2 years.

Of course the caveat to all this is we had huge expectations for 2007-2008 earnings based on analysts' expectations and those did not come to fruition.

He has pointed out the same thing I have often said, people should not confuse the U.S. economy with corporate profits; and even more important "American" companies are increasingly not reliant on the U.S. economy with a large proportion of sales and profits now coming from overseas. Of course that raises other issues, if those markets slow down. It also does not mean great things for the American worker, but as a hedge fund manager that is an afterthought to corporate profits.

As for Europe, it is clear he believes the ECB should be doing everything the Fed is doing and going 'balls to the wall' by handing money out in every direction. He chose not to say much about it because his mom said if you don't have nice things to say about people who don't print money so the speculator class can get massively rich, then don't say anything.

The two main difference I had with him was (a) his take on the dollar and (b) that there is really no downside to the Fed's actions. If he is correct on the latter, then why does the Fed not just do a permanent Quantitative Easing program forever and we never have to worry about the stock market ever falling again. As for the former, if you look at the dollar versus the 2 other main currencies of the world (yen, euro) yes it has not fallen. But the reason for that has nothing to do with "no effects by Fed actions"; all 3 regions are in a race to the bottom, trying to devalue themselves to "buy" growth and increase exports. Instead, when you compare the dollar to countries who are fiscally sound (or gold) the story changes dramatically. See [Dec 23, 2010: Is the U.S. Dollar Weak or Not?] for a full explanation of that concept. This is the "out" that anyone who just looks at the dollar index (which heavily weights the euro versus the dollar) have when they say the dollar is "holding up".

11 minute video (the first 11 minutes were spent discussing the Pittsburgh Steelers, and food bank)

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